From The Webby Awards —

The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS) today announced the Nominees for the 22nd Annual Webby Awards, including Amazon Music, Headspace, S-Town, Cuphead, and Google Earth VR as well as some of the year’s most talked-about personalities, including Oprah Winfrey, Colin Kaepernick, RuPaul, James Corden, Shonda Rhimes, Kumail Nanjiani, Selena Gomez, and Meryl Streep.

All Nominees are eligible to win the Internet industry’s two most prestigious awards: The Webby Award, selected by the Academy, and The Webby People’s Voice Award, voted on by Internet fans around the world at http://vote.webbyawards.com. Voting for the Webby People’s Voice Awards is open now until Thursday, April 19, 2018, at 11:59 PM (PT).

“We witnessed Webby Nominees use the Internet in extraordinary ways this year to break down walls, amplify muted voices, discover untold stories, and capture our attention through new innovations that engaged, surprised, and inspired us,” said Claire Graves, Executive Director of The Webby Awards. “The Webby Awards is honored to recognize the hard work and efforts of our Nominees this year who took creativity, passion, and wonder to new heights and have truly brought out the best in the Internet.”

In an era of driverless cars, sophisticated chatbots, and seemingly omnipresent voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, The Webby Awards introduced several new categories this year to honor new developments, cutting-edge capabilities, and groundbreaking innovations across machine learning and AI. Nominees for the inaugural awards in those categories include Silicon Valley’s Not Hotdog, Genius Chatbot, Art with Watson: Hidden Portraits, Instagram DeepText, and The Billion Color Film.

Nominees this year raised the bar on virtual reality and augmented reality, transforming everyday moments into dynamic, unforgettable experiences through Webby-nominated work including Capturing Everest, The Last Goodbye, The Virtual Orchestra, Night Sky, Surrealist VR, and A Trip to Mars with Buzz Aldrin.

The Webby Awards introduced a new suite of categories for Games, celebrating excellence across technical achievement, visual design, music/sound design, and user experience for Nominees like Hearthstone, Overwatch, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, MLB Home Run Derby VR, Eclipse, INSIDE, The Long Dark, and Heads Up!

Innovation continued to fuel notable shifts in the media landscape with legacy media organizations and new media companies alike reimagining content platforms and engagement channels to bring stories to life for a new and demanding breed of consumers. A record-breaking number of media companies were recognized this year, across a variety of categories, including The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, The New York Times, Super Deluxe, The Guardian, TIME, Fusion, The Intercept, Great Big Story, Panoply, and The Ringer. Media organizations in contention for the first-ever Webby “Media Company of the Year” are VICE Media (29), Condé Nast (26),National Geographic (22), Turner (18), and Viacom (15), presented to the media company that performs best across all Webby Award categories.

In what was a turbulent year, Webby Nominees addressed a host of complex issues, including sexual harassment, immigration, voting access, equal pay, the opioid crisis, marriage equality, climate change, LGBTQ rights, gun control, and more. Some of the powerful Webby-nominated campaigns that left an indelible mark on the Internet include Fearless Girl, Spotify’s I’m With the Banned, The Most German Supermarket, Google Pride’s #showup, and The New York Times’ The Truth Is.

The Webby Awards honored the best in Podcast & Digital Audio for the second year in row, recognizing Nominees like Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations, RuPaul: What’s the Tee?, More Perfect, Heaven’s Gate, 2 Dope Queens, and Death, Sex & Money.These trailblazing shows and personalities continue to up the ante on the popularity—and profitability—of one of the most dynamic platforms on the Internet today.

Winners will be announced on Tuesday, April 24, 2018, and celebrated at a star-studded Awards Show hosted by comedian Amber Ruffin on Monday, May 14, 2018, at Cipriani Wall Street. Fans can watch the full Awards Show and all the show highlights, including special performances and hallmark 5-Word Speeches from the night’s big Winners, the next morning, on Tuesday, May 15, at webbyawards.com and on the Webby Awards video channel.

EY provides vote tabulation consulting for The Webby Awards. For a complete list of Nominees and to vote for the People’s Voice Awards, please visit http://vote.webbyawards.com

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